In which our heroine, having defeated the three-headed demon of supercomputing, optimization, and ill-posed problems in her quest for the elusive Ph.D., embarks upon her new career.

Sunday, November 07, 2010

The Solution for Sweet Potatoes

So, our CSA is over, but we still had a bunch of sweet potatoes left from it. I was trying to figure out what to do with all those sweet potatoes, so I turned to my trusty cookbook, The Joy of Cooking. Imagine my delight when I saw a recipe called "Sweet Potato and Peanut Stew." And it got bonus points because it called for zucchini too!

In addition to using ingredients I had too much of, it sounded like an interesting combination of flavors. It calls for bell peppers, jalapenos, ginger, and garlic, sauteed in peanut oil (I substituted sunflower oil). Then you add chili powder, cumin, and red pepper flakes to that, before stirring in the sweet potatoes, some tomato paste, and enough water to cover the veggies. You let it simmer for 45 minutes while you cook up some ground beef or turkey, which you add after the simmering, along with the cut-up zucchini. The final step is to combine some of the stew liquid with some peanut butter, and then stir that into the stew and simmer. You can eat it plain, or over couscous or rice.

I made it last weekend, and boy, was it ever delicious! It was kind of spicy but not too bad for me, especially with the couscous. We liked it so much that I'm making a double recipe of it right now, and we're going to freeze some of it for later. Thank you, Joy of Cooking, for this recipe!

4 comments:

There's another recipe in JoC (although it might be for squash, I can't recall) where you slice the sweet potatoes up really thin, then roast them with chili powder and a drizzle of olive oil. If you do it right, they're almost like fries or chips. That's super yummy.

I like sweet potatoes a lot better ever since realizing you didn't HAVE to have them with marshmallows or brown sugar or sweet stuff. Sugar is overkill, IMO. I like mine spicy.

Mmmmm. Both of those sound really good, though I'd leave out the spicy spices and keep the chili powder. I might have some CSA sweet potatoes left. But the chili chips would probably work with white potatoes too, and I know I have a bag of those left.

You would be surprised how not-spicy it is, Madeleine. I am a total spice wimp but I could eat it. I think the peanut counteracts all the hotness but leaves the flavor intact. But you could probably halve the amount of peppers and other spicy spices as a compromise.

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